For several reasons, I haven't felt like blogging the past week. Chief of all the reasons is this damned flu. Though it has sub-sided somewhat, I still sometimes laspe into fits of uncontrollable coughing that leave my throat wracked in pain and my head throbbing from the exertion.
Also, maybe it's because of the flu, I find myself tired out almost all the time. Take last Thursday for example, I spent the whole evening just doing one chore : cleaning out my wardrobe. At the end of it, despite having for the first time in three years, a very clean wardrobe, I was ready to keel over and collaspe in the middle of my room.
Another reason is that I have been feeling a bit repressed where my blog and other online haunts are concerned. Sometimes I feel I can no longer be myself or say what I truly feel, because people have begun to have various impressions of me and they tend to rather defend their own impression of me, than accept that I am not a one dimensional creature.
I guess I have myself to blame for that. Sometimes when I am in a better (healthier) state of mind, I think I am too patient. Too concerned for others. Or too obsessed with the consequences to act the way I truly want to act. Restraint. Until I fall sick and want to do things my way for once. And then I'm acting 'out of character'. But am I really? Who decides?
Anyway all these are the opinions of friends and family, people I care about. And as always, I try to respect everyone's opinions, feedback, etc, even when they are directly related to me or my personality, or just plain ridiculous - I am just wondering aloud here.
I guess a part of me (a very naive part of me) is just hoping that one day the friends that I esteem the most will realise that I have always been offering un-questioning, non-judgmental friendship, and treasure me for me, not who they want me to be.
..
Sunday night is usually very quiet in my neighbourhood, and sometimes I wish it could always be this way. Dad is out, and I am thankful for the quiet. (His gf has been throwing tantrums in our house the past two nights.)
And tonight, coupled with the cool sea-breeze, it is rather pleasant to think that this is the first time after so long that I finally feel that grief has loosened its stranglehold on me at last. For someone who used to mourn her losses every Christmas, I feel oddly unfazed by the idea of Christmas this year. Not that the grief is completely gone. But at least I have stopped crying myself to sleep at mere memories.
I remember I used to try to hide myself from friends and their families during Christmas. I know they loved me and wanted me to share in their festive joy. But it always brought me unfathomable depths of sorrow just to see their families, whole, intact, just doing nothing but having a meal together at Christmas. Just one dinner and I'd go home and cry til dawn. No matter what I did, I always felt like an ugly stain in everyone's colourful celebrations and so I'd always try to make up lame excuses to escape their company.
It was only last year that I finally decided to go to Christmas dinner with R and her family. I was rather reluctant actually, but told myself that because her granny invited me it would be rude to change my mind. I was glad I went, though. Even though the pain was still there.
But this year, I've somehow changed more than I ever guessed I would have. Maybe I'd passed a certain milestone that I didn't even notice was there. The sharp festive pain has been replaced with a neutrality that is somewhat foreign to me. In fact, I have not decided which I prefer, the pain or the lack of it.
Maybe this is what healing feels like - an organic layer of numbness that continually adapts itself and insulates one's soul from the various vestiges of grief? Well maybe that's just how my heart feels like tonight, as if there's something wrapped around it. Gift-wrap? Maybe, but is he ready for such a burdensome gift?
- 27 November 2006 1:01am -
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